Non-contiguous text in Pages 5? Subscript/superscript buttons in the Pages 5 toolbar?

Confirmed!

Dear Larry,

I agree with you, not having subscript and superscript buttons makes things quite difficult for those who need to write chemical and mathematical formulas. However, I did find that there is a button for advanced settings on the text inspector (right next to B, I, U) that allows you to subscript or superscript a character faster.

If you had the old version of Pages already installed on your machine, when you upgraded to the new version your old version should have been retained and put in a separate folder in your Applications directory. You should thus have both the old and new versions. Any features you were in the habit of using can still be used in that version. Obviously it would have been better if the new version of Pages could have met feature parity with the old version, but users of the old version are not left completely without a paddle since you still have the old version.

If Pages follows the pattern of iMovie, which I expect it to, missing features will be added back as they are developed for the new code base (since the new version of Pages was rewritten from the ground up instead of building on the old version). Not an ideal UX, I grant you, but there's hope. Apple has made several iWork-related hires in recent months, so I also expect iWork development to have a greater focus than it has had.

I too was upset about the loss of sub and superscript buttons. There are, however, keyboard shortcuts for both:

subscript: command-control-"-"

superscript: command-control-shift-"+"

The latter takes more fingers than I have... but, if you select a character and apply one of these, you can then go to the new "style" menu in the sidebar and add subscript and superscript as styles.

Next step is to get Apple to make these default styles.

Glenn

I hope Apple reinstalls the ability to select non-contigous text. This is a very usefaul capacity and I don't understand why it should be removed.

This official Apple announcement may be helpful. Apple is working on adding back many features that were removed when they completely restructured pages from the ground up. They are reading user comments and have posted this:

support.apple.com/kb/ht6049

Until then:

It tells you how to find and use your Pages 09 application and revert your documents back to 09 whether you have made edits or just opened the document.

Apple promises 8 features back, in 6 months time. Just a promise, nothing more.

Meanwile the list of removed features now is over 90 and growing*.

http://www.freeforum101.com/iworktipsntrick/viewforum.php?f=22&sid=690b2e913d245 6c1d64ffb6510b599a2&mforum=iworktipsntrick

Hi Larry Byrd,

Pages 5.0.1 update returns the ability to customize the toolbar, and offers sub/superscript buttons that you can put in the toolbar. You still cannot select non-contiguous text, though.

2 features in 1 month.

45 months to go.

Wasn't that the same time they took to can Pages '09?

Peter

I use my iPad for work. I heavily rely on pages, keynote, and numbers in my lectures, workshops, data collection, etc. The entire OS upgrade was a sidestep with no meaningful additions (example: hey, now I can export my documents to ePub!). The losses were / are staggering. I need to superscript at this very moment and I cannot do that because someone decided to release the new OS LONG before it was ready.

We are all in the same boat.

I have kept my iPad on iOS 6 for this reason, but files get screwed up in iCloud.

All you can do is rate and review the newer versions in the App Stores, where the public can see it, and provide feedback to Apple but they really don't pay much attention to their users.

Peter

Please apple fix. It´s a joke upgrading the program and non-contiguous text selection is removed.

Why not customize the Pages v5 toolbar with the addition of super/subscript buttons?

Menu > View > Customize Toolbar...

Just drag the respective icons and drop them in your toolbar. Will look like the following:

dahlahorsen wrote:

It´s a joke upgrading the program and non-contiguous text selection is removed.

This exemplifies the logic: "you cannot do it on the iOS, we won't let you do it on OSX either." Actually, I do not believe that it is a conscious, determined and pre-cogitated logic—and that scares me even more.